FIFA Club World Championship

The world’s top soccer clubs do battle in the Revamped Toyota Cup

Kazu Miura returns to his homeland with Sydney FC Courtesy of Sydney FC

The world’s best club teams will be in Tokyo this month for the FIFA Club World Championship/Toyota Cup Japan 2005. This tournament basically replaces FIFA’s previous, somewhat flawed Club World Championship and the better known Toyota Cup, which was billed unofficially as the world club championship (but only played between the champions of Europe and South America).

The new Toyota Cup will see a few old faces return to Japan. Kazu Miura will guest for Sydney FC and play alongside former J. Leaguer Steve Careca under manager Pierre Littbarski (an ex-JEF United player and former Yokohama FC manager), while one-time Verdy striker Amoroso of São Paulo will also be back in his old stomping grounds. The tournament will also see a couple of teams familiar with Tokyo—São Paulo won in 1992 and 1993; Liverpool lost in 1981 and 1984.

English clubs had mixed fortunes in the old Toyota Cup, and Liverpool will be eager to change that. Usually, they are a club that travels well. Liverpool should enjoy the trip to Tokyo, and their fans will liven up Roppongi. It’s difficult to know who will have more fun: While Kopites in their replica shirts will take advantage of the many night-time treats Tokyo has to offer, Steven Gerrard and the men in real Liverpool shirts will hope to revel in the competition. Players and supporters should both fly home with smiles on their faces.

Liverpool fans will be in Japan in impressive numbers, given the huge distance and cost involved. The club have always been well followed on their travels, and the incentive has intensified because the fans are more used to seeing the team win in foreign combat rather than on English battlegrounds. Under Rafa Benitez, Liverpool’s tactical approach is far more suited to slower, more thoughtful overseas football than the crash-bang-wallop of the Premiership. Even with Gerrard and Jamie Carragher in the side, Liverpool sometimes lack the physical strength, and especially the pace, to prosper in England.

But hand them their passports and shove them on a plane, and Liverpool feel a real wind beneath their wings. They won the UEFA Cup in 2001 under Gerard Houllier in Dortmund, seized the 2005 European Cup in memorable circumstances in Istanbul, and are now plotting more long-distance glory in Tokyo.

One Liverpool player brimming with particular determination to make his mark in a FIFA event in Japan is Gerrard, who treats every game as if it’s his last. Injury forced the inspirational England midfielder to miss the 2002 World Cup, and he could well prove the star of this tournament. Gerrard’s club are certainly taking the tournament seriously, and their appetite will intensify further if they run into Sydney FC, who, apart from Kazu, also feature Dwight Yorke, the former Manchester United striker. Yorke’s association with United, the team Liverpool supporters hate most, will ensure that if Sydney FC meets the pride of Merseyside in the semifinals, some fireworks are likely.

If Liverpool’s trip to the World Club Championship is half as lively as United’s attempt to win the trophy in 2000, it will certainly keep the press busy. United’s journey to Rio mixed anarchy and Carnaval. The club’s then-chairman, Martin Edwards, enjoyed Rio’s nightlife rather too much, and his exotic evening ended up on the front pages of the English tabloids, while a group of United fans and journalists joined Vasco da Gama’s hardcore supporters on the terraces and eventually had to run for their lives.

That won’t happen in Yokohama (although it’s possible in Roppongi). But while the fans will enjoy the nightlife, when Liverpool’s players get their passports out, they play to win. Expect nothing less.

The FIFA Club World Championship/Toyota Cup Japan 2005 takes place Dec 11-18 in Tokyo and Yokohama. See sports listings for details.

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